16 October 2009

Juan Lim and Kok Loong Wong performs at Toynbee Hall

Cancer not only has psychological influences on the patients but it also has a huge physiological impact too, especially Breast cancer. It causes imperfection to the body…Cellist, Juan Lim and Architect, Kok Loong Wong recently performed at 1 of nine at the Toynbee Hall. They presented a music performance with moving images. The idea of their collaboration was inspired by the Japanese aesthetic of looking at things. Wabi -Sabi - to seek beauty in things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It is the beauty of unconventional things.

The moving image sequence was a series of pottery pieces Kok Loong Wong made. Traditionally, pottery making often concentrates on achieving symmetrical perfection in the process of creation. But Kok Loong Wong was interested in experimenting and try to break away from this conventional way of making pottery. The outcome of the experiment might seem strange to some, but it reveals its own beauty.As an emotional response to what Kok Loong Wongcreated, Juan Lim chose the dissonant, ambient music of the Cello Sonata by George Crumb, to represent the notions of imperfection and sorrow. Yet out of that imperfection there should arise perfection, or the aspiration towards perfection- hence the choice of the Prelude from the G major Cello Suite by Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote some of the most perfect and uplifting music in Western art.

They hoped that the performance inspires people to see that all beauty is imperfect.

We tend to believe that the beauty of things should be symmetrically perfect, that all imperfection is ugly. And yet a tree is not symmetrical.